IRS Workers Still on Track to Get Bonuses

In February IRS officials announced employees will be receiving bonuses in order to boost morale after the scandal broke about the agency inappropriately targeting conservative tea party groups.

Citing the need to boost employee morale, the Internal Revenue Service’s new commissioner said Monday that he will pay out millions of dollars in bonuses to agency employees, reversing a decision his predecessor made to save money amid the sequester budget cuts and other belt-tightening last year.

The agency remains under fire for targeting tea party groups, but Commissioner John Koskinen said the bonuses are needed to retain and attract good employees in a time of cutbacks.

Despite declarations from the IRS and its Democratic defenders, IRS targeting has not ended and dozens of conservative groups are still waiting for their tax exempt status after years of answering prying and detailed questions from the agency.

Now, a group of conservative lawmakers in the House are demanding Congress vote to strip the IRS of bonus privileges. More from Breitbart News:

A group of conservative House members led by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) is writing to the leadership of the House Appropriations Committee to press for cutting off IRS employee bonuses in the division of the agency that targeted Tea Party groups.

“IRS Commissioner John Koskinen announced in February of this year his decision to pay out bonuses to IRS employees to improve ‘employee morale,’” Gosar and six other House conservatives wrote to Appropriations chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY). “We find these payouts to be particularly offensive given that the morale of countless Americans was crushed by the IRS. We understand, though, that not every IRS employee was responsible for the misdeeds—it seems that the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division was primarily responsible for these unjust actions. That is why we are seeking only to prohibit this division’s bonuses in the upcoming appropriations process.”

The letter, which was sent on April 2 but is becoming public for the first time now after being provided exclusively to Breitbart News, is the second in a series of letters Gosar is writing to pressure the man in House Republican leadership--Rogers, as the Appropriations chairman--who can actually stop wasteful spending by refusing to appropriate it in spending bills.

If this legislation were to pass the House this year, it would present a major test for the Senate ahead of the 2014 midterm elections as red state Democrats do everything they can to hold onto their seats.